Can you throw out a bad tenant ?

It's like they are deliberately trying to dis incentivise small landlords from investing in Condo Properties?    Then who will?  Landlords are trapped by these changes.  

 The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (RTA) was recently amended by the Rental Fairness Act, 2017 to address loopholes or abuses by some “small” landlords under the current RTA. Most of the amendments will take effect on proclamation by Ontario's lieutenant-governor within the next few months. Lawyers who advise small landlords on the operation, purchase or sale of small residential rental properties should ensure their clients are aware of the legislative changes.
Owners of rental units who want to increase the value of their property will seek to raise rental income, as that will greatly enhance the value of the building for sale or financing purposes. However, the RTA prohibits substantial rent increases and termination of tenancies to allow re-rental of apartments at higher rents.
A strategy engaged in by some owners and vendors of small rental properties, including individually rented condominium units, has been to seek termination of tenancy on the grounds that the landlord intends to reside in the rental unit, thereby freeing the unit from rent control so that it can be re-rented at a higher market rent. Other landlords have used the strategy to simply get rid of an unwanted tenant.
The RTA permits termination for “landlord’s own use,” as long as it is a bona fide request and the tenancy itself is not subject to a fixed term. It is the lack of bona fides by some landlords in deploying these strategies that has prompted the legislative amendments. The RTA amendment (to s. 48) states that a minimum of one year’s residential occupancy is required for a landlord (or member of a landlord’s family) who seeks to terminate a tenancy based on use by the landlord or member of the landlord’s family; furthermore, the landlord must pay the vacating tenant compensation of one month's rent.
If, within one year of the tenant vacating the unit, the landlord advertises the unit for rent; advertises the rental unit or the building it is in for sale; enters into a lease with someone other than the former tenant; demolishes the rental unit or the building it is in; or takes any step to convert the use of the rental building or unit it is in, it will be presumed that the landlord gave the notice in bad faith, thus exposing the landlord to fines of up to $50,000 and a payment of compensation to the tenant who vacated. The amendment also prohibits a corporate landlord from giving a “landlord’s own use” notice of termination.
The RTA amendment (to s. 47) requires a landlord to use a written “prescribed” form of lease that must be signed by the landlord and the tenant. Failure to use the prescribed lease and provide a copy of the signed lease to the tenant will entitle the tenant to demand a copy of same within 21 days, failing which the tenant is entitled to withhold a maximum of one month's rent until such time as the prescribed form of lease is provided and presented for signature.
If the landlord fails to provide the prescribed lease within 30 days of the tenant withholding a month's rent, the tenant is not required to repay the sum to the landlord. Upon presentation of the prescribed lease following the demand, it is open to the tenant to reject the lease, regardless of its proposed term, and to give 60 days' notice to terminate the tenancy prior to the end of a rental period.
Another RTA amendment (to s. 134) prohibits a landlord from collecting or attempting to collect from a former tenant of a rental unit any amount of money "purporting to be rent" with respect to any period after the tenancy has terminated and the tenant has vacated the rental unit. In situations where a tenant wishes to “break” a fixed-term lease, a usual tactic is deliberate non-payment of rent or to hold a "lease-breaking party," in order to receive an eviction notice from the landlord. The eviction notice requires the tenant to vacate the unit within a matter of weeks, and if the tenant does so, the tenancy is terminated.
Prior to the RTA amendments, it was common for landlords to demand or formally claim any lost rent pending re-rental of the unit as “damages” for the tenant’s deliberate breach of contract. Now, such a claim is prohibited, and where a landlord makes demand for same, the landlord is also exposed to substantial fines.
The amendments referred to above are three components of the full range of amendments found in the Rental Fairness Act, 2017. However, they are changes that can directly affect the operations of small landlords in particular. The amendments to ss. 47 and 48 are not yet in force, but the s. 134 amendment is currently in force and will affect demands for recovery of damages made after May 30, 2017, or those outstanding in any proceeding after that date.
Joe Hoffer is a partner with Cohen Highley LLP who specializes in residential tenancies law. https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/4204/advising-landlords-on-traps-in-ontario-s-new-rental-fairness-act

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David Pylyp

What causes Builders NOT to build Rental Housing

ONTARIO CANADA

Tenants may think the government is looking out for tenant interests, but if that was true there would be no pandemic housing shortage, multiple offers, outrageous selling prices, extremely low vacancy rates, high rental tenant property taxes and eight-year affordable housing wait lists.

Ontario’s recent “Rent Fairness Act” continues the brutal, gratuitous, dystopian, anti-landlord legislation meted out by short-sighted, vote-pandering politicians who have literally (not metaphorically) persecuted landlords for decades; all of it resulting in the national pandemic critical housing shortage. Examples:

• Of 46 offenses in the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA), 34 solely benefit tenants, 10 reciprocate with landlords, one benefits the landlord and one prevents landlords from kicking vote-canvassing politicians off their property.
• RTA and the Human Rights Code (HRC) have unintended discriminatory consequences, including:
  1. The broken Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) and RTA make all people with no credit, work or rental history (single moms, foreign students and refugees) extremely high-risk tenants for landlords.
  2. Hoarders’ rights override the rights of all other tenants. Vermin, fire hazards and more ruin the lifestyle of neighbours and significantly negatively impact property value. Firefighters can refuse to enter a burning unit if they cannot turn 360 degrees with full respirator gear on. Landlords must accommodate challenged tenants to the point of a landlord’s undue hardship, which is not defined in legislation.
  3. The tenant qualification process of public agencies is not aligned with the needs of the landlord.
• Landlords submit 91 per cent of LTB applications. Seventy-five per cent are for tenants not paying their rent. The average LTB eviction is five months (versus 25 days in some other provinces), costing an average $5,200 that is rarely collected. LTB offers free, taxpayer-funded duty counsel service to tenants but offers nothing to landlords.
• A tenant can pay the sheriff full rent arrears on the day of their eviction and start the whole process again.
• Ontario spent billions on solar power programs. Result: average $217.33/kWhr in Ontario versus $67.89/kWhr in Quebec. Government then punished landlords by preventing landlords from passing on utility costs to the actual consumers (tenants) of that energy.
• The LTB won’t evict tenants who sign and then breach a no-smoking clause in their rental agreement. The whole health industry pushed for this change and the provincial government still denied it. Eleven per cent of Canadians smoke daily and 64 per cent don’t smoke.
• The HRC denies requests to teach landlords about landlord responsibilities but hosts free full-day seminars for tenants.
• The RTA and municipal bylaws require landlords to remediate mould caused by a tenant’s actions, even though it’s not caused by the building’s envelope.
• The rent of a tenant switching from a single bulk meter to an individual meter must be reduced by the cost of energy consumed over the previous 12 months. Therefore, the most energy-abusive tenants receive the greatest rent decreases while energy-conscious tenants are penalized.
• The RTA sets the practical limit on building repairs and maintenance: three per cent of property income for three years. The 270,000 Ontario social housing units have a $1.2 billion capital shortfall. Toronto faces $2.6 billion in building repairs and will close 400 homes in 2017 and 1,000 by 2018.
• Some municipalities charge tenants up to 2.5 times the property tax rate of condo and single- family homeowners.
• Rent control doesn’t benefit low-income tenants. Tenants who can afford to pay market rents receive the benefit of lower rents and successfully beat low-income tenants competing for tenancies in the government-created housing shortage.  Shrinking housing inventory forces buyers to stay in rental housing longer. There are 171,360 Ontario families waiting for affordable housing (2015), some for as long as eight years.
• The federal budget gave a $209.4 million bailout for social housing repairs but nothing to the private sector faced with the same issues.
• A tenant’s unpaid utility bill is added to the property owner’s property tax bill, even if the landlord proves that their tenant signed an agreement to pay their own utilities. This is like holding police responsible for all the crimes committed by the criminals they didn’t catch.
• Municipal bedbug and garbage bylaws hold landlords responsible for cost of cleanup even if the tenant caused the infestation or doesn’t sort their garbage.
• Housing shortages lead some tenants to illegally rent out a rental unit or portion at a higher rent.
• The LTB won’t hear cases where tenants who damaged a property moved out. Small Claims Court won’t hear any case involving a landlord-tenant dispute.

Society can’t exist without housing. Private sector landlords built homes for more than nine million Canadians, and relatively affordable housing to a subset of more than three million. Canada’s total social housing sector accommodates about 1.5 million Canadians.

Private sector landlords willingly accept extraordinary financial and legal risks to provide safe and healthy housing. Landlords are not social workers, financiers or otherwise an extension of government social housing programs, policies and other political agendas.

About 39,000 rental units were built in 1972 alone versus a net of about 22,500 units in the 25 years following. Look at the success of the housing programs of the 1960s and early 1970s and replicate that success.

Footnote: An anagram of “LandlordTenantBoard” is ‘Abandon Rent, Add Troll’.

Chris Seepe   Chris Seepe is a published writer and author, ‘landlording’ course instructor, president of the Landlords Association of Durham, and a commercial real estate broker of record at Aztech Realty in Toronto, specializing in income-generating and multi-residential investment properties. Call (416) 525-1558, send him an email, or visit his website.

This was published in a REM article July 2017 
I was disappointed to see such a litany of Landlord Rights Abuses I just published this in its entirety.

Peel and Toronto are both considering $1,000 annual licensing fees for Landlords.

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